Keith McDorman walks into the back room of an Austin, Texas coffee shop. With his dirty-blond hair, light eyes, week-old beard, and striped button-down shirt, he looks like a younger, shorter, bohemian version of Bradley Cooper. He tosses his scooter helmet onto the wooden table, sits across from me at a booth that barely fits us both, and talks before I ask a question.

That statement brings glances from studying college students. We opt for more privacy by heading outside, where we talk over a live rock band at a high table near a vegan food truck. McDorman continues by telling me about a conversation he had recently with his girlfriend, in which he expressed fear that his libido had dropped. She laughed, since, well, they had had sex six times that week.

The average American loses his or her virginity at age 17. Virgins make up 12.3 percent of females and 14.3 percent of males aged 20 to 24.

He told me this less as a brag and more as a preface. McDorman had lost his virginity just a year prior. He abstained from sex because he had low self-esteem, which he says heightened after learning about his sinful nature at church. He didn’t want to be ostracized from his Christian family and friends. And he didn’t want to prematurely ejaculate while messing around, which had happened to him once in college. So he didn’t have sex until he was 28.

What eventually made him feel ready was practicing orgasmic meditation, which entails stroking a woman’s clitoris for 15 minutes. The class, which he joined after hearing about it from a friend, eased McDorman into being sexual in a permissible environment where he felt safe. Soon after, he lost his virginity to a girl in this community and later met his current girlfriend.

Like McDorman, many individuals who lose their virginities “late” do so for many reasons—not just the stereotypical “can’t get laid” or “super-religious” assumptions. Whether it’s by choice, circumstance, or both, late virginity loss can bring anything from pride to sexual dysfunction for the few Americans who experience it.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average age Americans lose their virginities (defined here as vaginal sexual intercourse) is 17.1 for both men and women. The CDC also reports that virgins make up 12.3 percent of females and 14.3 percent of males aged 20 to 24. That number drops below 5 percent for both male and female virgins aged 25 to 29 and goes as low as 0.3 percent for virgins aged 40 to 44.

Of course, those statistics only represent heterosexual penile-vaginal sex. The question of “what is virginity?” obviously has a different answer in the LGBT community. And straight people, too, sometimes feel that oral or anal sex counts as virginity loss. Still, the most common definition of virginity loss is penile-vaginal intercourse, as Planned Parenthood points out on its website.

Statistically, if you didn’t have sex in your teen years, you’re in the minority. But most people I asked in my unscientific poll felt virginity loss wasn’t “late” if the person was still college-aged. Many thought 25 was the first late age. One friend told me that for secular people, “late” is 20 and older, and for religious people, 40 and older. The popular 1999 film American Pie suggests that late is freshman year of college. And the character Jess (played by Zooey Deschanel) on New Girl stated in a flashback in a recent episode, “In three years, I’ll be 25. I can’t rent my first car as a virgin. They’ll know.”

"Neither of us had anything to compare it to. If I didn't orgasm or he didn't orgasm, it's not like, 'You don't love me.' It’s more like, 'Oh, how can I do that better or different next time?'"

Not only does the perception of what is “late” vary among individuals, it also varies among communities. For Sarah and John Devaney, who lost their virginities to each other on their wedding night, being a 30-year-old virgin was not too outlandish within their Christian community. When they got married, Sarah was 31 and John was 30.

The couple recently Skyped with me, sitting on their bed in Reno, Nevada. John, now 33, would look like a college professor if he weren’t wearing a University of Nevada, Reno sweater. He’s an online math teacher with thick-rimmed glasses, neat dirty blond hair, and unblemished white teeth. Sarah is a 34-year-old brunette who smiles with her whole face. She has bangs, dark eyes wrapped in black mascara, and is a director for a Christian ministry.

The couple’s Christian convictions partially motivated their decision to wait until marriage but they say those weren't the only reasons. The two also wanted to avoid STDs, pregnancy, and the emotional damage they had heard can come with having sex with someone who ultimately leaves. They speculate that they would have lost their virginities later than average even if they weren’t Christians. John thinks he would’ve lost it after college, in his 20s, since he admits he didn’t know how to talk to girls before age 20 and wasn’t ready for sex before then. Sarah says she had low self-worth before age 25, making her believe she would’ve eased into sex piece-by-piece in college.

Their wedding night wasn’t spectacular but their sex lives continue to improve.

“The first time felt good to me but he didn’t orgasm,” Sarah says. “We knew we wanted to keep learning, to figure it out more. It took lots of experimentation. Neither of us had anything to compare it to. If I didn’t orgasm or he didn’t orgasm, it’s not like, ‘You don’t love me.’ It’s more like, ‘Oh, how can I do that better or different next time?’”

John agrees with her, adding, “I think we’re in a very satisfying sexual relationship. We don’t have many issues.”

Not every person who loses their virginity later in life fares as well as John and Sarah, though. According to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health, survey respondents who lost their virginities “late”—a mean age of 22—more frequently reported sexual problems than those who lost it at a “normative” age—a mean age of 17.5, in this study. These sexual problems include having trouble reaching orgasm, maintaining an erection, and becoming sexually aroused.

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Dr. Stephen Snyder, a sex therapist in New York City, has seen his share of sexual dysfunction among his male patients. These patients, who often are virgins or men who lost their virginities in their 20s or 30s, most commonly suffer from extreme shyness, social anxiety disorder, or anxiety about their bodies.

"It generally has to do with how sex is done and how it's arranged in the secular modern world," Snyder says. "The man usually is the initiator and has to take some risks in order to ask someone else, indicate he's interested, and find out whether the answer is yes or no. So a man who is socially anxious is going to have much more difficulty taking that risk."

During our phone conversation, Snyder refers me to the webpage for the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale Test to emphasize some of his points. If someone doesn’t feel comfortable being the center of attention (a question on that test), sex may not be easy for him or her, since it requires being the center of attention, Snyder says. If someone’s not comfortable meeting strangers (another question on the test), they may not thrive sexually, since we tend to have sex with people we know the least well, according to Snyder.

Snyder says his patients’ feelings about being older virgins varies from somewhat embarrassed at 25 to extremely embarrassed at 45. Sometimes their issues could be low sex drives caused by hormones or even a lack of interest in sex (such as with asexuals), but many times it’s linked to anxiety. In those cases, Snyder often prescribes medicine and performs psychotherapy to de-catastrophize negative thoughts.

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Childhood physical or sexual abuse can also, understandably, leave some hesitant to have sex. Mare Simone, a Los Angeles sex surrogate and Tantra educator, has had older virgin patients who have been sexually abused. As a sex surrogate, she has intimate encounters (sometimes intercourse) with people to help them overcome sexual issues, often working alongside with a therapist in cases of abuse.

“If you had trauma in the body, that trauma can get reawakened just by touching the area where you were traumatized,” Simone says. “Even if the touch is gentle and loving, if it’s not backed with a certain amount of strength, confidence and support, it can continue to re-traumatize that same issue and cause a crazy, spinning-nowhere cycle.”

Emotional abuse can also lead to sexual abstinence. That was the case for designer Stacy B. of Boston, whose father regularly told her she was worthless and ugly. This made her distrust men. She’s 39 now and lost her virginity at 37 after going to therapy for seven years.

Stacy says her mother taught her that sex is special (a common reason people wait) and she kind of believed it. Later she realized that the emotional trauma she faced growing up caused her to keep her distance from men, rather than the belief that sex was special. She tells me over the phone that she never got a lot of attention from boys, not because she’s unattractive but because she put up walls. She wishes she had dealt with this a long time ago, before becoming too old to have kids.

“I guess I needed to work through a lot of things and learn to trust my instincts,” Stacy says. “Then I needed to learn to trust other people before ever doing something like that.”

Survey respondents who lost their virginities at 20 or older reported having more satisfying romantic relationships than respondents who lost their virginities younger than 20.

Stacy lost her virginity to a guy she met on the casual encounters page of Craigslist, who she says was very accommodating to her inexperience. According to Stacy, her first time was fantastic: It didn’t hurt and she had an orgasm. In fact, she still has sex with him sometimes and says she has an incredible sex life.

“Would you say you’re making up for lost time?” I ask her.

“I’m certainly trying,” she says, laughing.

Dr. Aline Zoldbrod, a sex therapist in Boston, says the environment you grew up in can make all the difference in how you approach sex. The ideal environment, according to Zoldbrod, is a happy home where sexual curiosity is encouraged, questions about sex are answered age-appropriately, and privacy and independence are not only respected but also cultivated. Other environments, such as homes where sex is never talked about or where parents are not openly affectionate with each other, can lead to issues.

Adding body insecurities or a fear that you’ll be bad at sex to one of these non-ideal family situations, makes a likely candidate for holding back sexually, according to Zoldbrod. But it’s never too late to work it out and have great sex: One of her clients was 60 when she lost her virginity.

A University of Texas at Austin study showed that survey respondents who lost their virginities at 20 or older reported having more satisfying romantic relationships than respondents who lost their virginities younger than 20. While that doesn’t ring true for all people who waited, such as those who experienced sexual dysfunction or shame from losing it later, it’s certainly the case for McDorman.

After telling me how madly in love he is with his girlfriend and how sex has drawn them much closer, McDorman stands up to leave the coffee shop. But first, he brings our conversation full circle.

“I think I had a super-strong first year of sex,” McDorman says, putting on his helmet. “I don’t regret any of it. I’m learning a ton and it keeps getting better.”

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During residency, Iworked hospital shifts that could last 36 hours, without sleep, often without breaks of more than a few minutes. Even writing this now, it sounds to me like I’m bragging or laying claim to some fortitude of character. I can’t think of another type of self-injury that might be similarly lauded, except maybe binge drinking. Technically the shifts were 30 hours, the mandatory limit imposed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, but we stayed longer because people kept getting sick. Being a doctor is supposed to be about putting other people’s needs before your own. Our job was to power through.

The shifts usually felt shorter than they were, because they were so hectic. There was always a new patient in the emergency room who needed to be admitted, or a staff member on the eighth floor (which was full of late-stage terminally ill people) who needed me to fill out a death certificate. Sleep deprivation manifested as bouts of anger and despair mixed in with some euphoria, along with other sensations I’ve not had before or since. I remember once sitting with the family of a patient in critical condition, discussing an advance directive—the terms defining what the patient would want done were his heart to stop, which seemed likely to happen at any minute. Would he want to have chest compressions, electrical shocks, a breathing tube? In the middle of this, I had to look straight down at the chart in my lap, because I was laughing. This was the least funny scenario possible. I was experiencing a physical reaction unrelated to anything I knew to be happening in my mind. There is a type of seizure, called a gelastic seizure, during which the seizing person appears to be laughing—but I don’t think that was it. I think it was plain old delirium. It was mortifying, though no one seemed to notice.

A report will be shared with lawmakers before Trump’s inauguration, a top advisor said Friday.

President Obama has asked intelligence officials to perform a “full review” of election-related hacking, a top advisor told reporters Friday. The White House will share a report of its findings with lawmakers before Obama leaves office on January 20, 2017, she said.

Lisa Monaco, the president’s advisor for homeland security, made the comments at a Christian Science Monitor event. They were first reported by Politico and The Hill.

Last week, every Democrat (and a Democrat-aligned Independent) on the Senate Intelligence Committee called on the White House to declassify and release more information about Russia’s involvement in the U.S. elections. It’s not clear whether the review announced Friday is connected to the letter from the committee members.

His paranoid style paved the road for Trumpism. Now he fears what’s been unleashed.

Glenn Beck looks like the dad in a Disney movie. He’s earnest, geeky, pink, and slightly bulbous. His idea of salty language is bullcrap.

The atmosphere at Beck’s Mercury Studios, outside Dallas, is similarly soothing, provided you ignore the references to genocide and civilizational collapse. In October, when most commentators considered a Donald Trump presidency a remote possibility, I followed audience members onto the set of The Glenn Beck Program, which airs on Beck’s website, theblaze.com. On the way, we passed through a life-size replica of the Oval Office as it might look if inhabited by a President Beck, complete with a portrait of Ronald Reagan and a large Norman Rockwell print of a Boy Scout.

“Well, you’re just special. You’re American,” remarked my colleague, smirking from across the coffee table. My other Finnish coworkers, from the school in Helsinki where I teach, nodded in agreement. They had just finished critiquing one of my habits, and they could see that I was on the defensive.

I threw my hands up and snapped, “You’re accusing me of being too friendly? Is that really such a bad thing?”

“Well, when I greet a colleague, I keep track,” she retorted, “so I don’t greet them again during the day!” Another chimed in, “That’s the same for me, too!”

Unbelievable, I thought. According to them, I’m too generous with my hellos.

When I told them I would do my best to greet them just once every day, they told me not to change my ways. They said they understood me. But the thing is, now that I’ve viewed myself from their perspective, I’m not sure I want to remain the same. Change isn’t a bad thing. And since moving to Finland two years ago, I’ve kicked a few bad American habits.

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In 2008, Nebraska decriminalized child abandonment. The move was part of a "safe haven" law designed to address increased rates of infanticide in the state. Like other safe-haven laws, parents in Nebraska who felt unprepared to care for their babies could drop them off in a designated location without fear of arrest and prosecution. But legislators made a major logistical error: They failed to implement an age limitation for dropped-off children.

Within just weeks of the law passing, parents started dropping off their kids. But here's the rub: None of them were infants. A couple of months in, 36 children had been left in state hospitals and police stations. Twenty-two of the children were over 13 years old. A 51-year-old grandmother dropped off a 12-year-old boy. One father dropped off his entire family -- nine children from ages one to 17. Others drove from neighboring states to drop off their children once they heard that they could abandon them without repercussion.

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In diagnostic testing, there’s a basic distinction between sensitivity, or the ability to identify positive results, and specificity, the ability to exclude negative ones. A test with high specificity may avoid generating false positives, but at the price of missing many diagnoses. One with high sensitivity may catch those tricky diagnoses, but also generate false positives along the way. Some people seem to sift through information with high sensitivity, but low specificity—spotting connections that others can’t, and perhaps some that aren’t even there.

The president-elect has chosen Andrew Puzder, a vocal critic of minimum-wage hikes and new overtime rules.

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President-Elect Donald Trump announced Thursday evening that he picked Andrew Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants, which owns fast-food chains Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, to lead the U.S. Department of Labor. Puzder—like several of Trump’s other nominees—is a multi-millionaire and Washington outsider who served as an adviser and fundraiser during the presidential campaign. While there’s no political record to indicate how Puzder thinks about the labor market, his remarks as a business executive give some indication of the stances he’ll take on several important labor issues.

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Since the end of World War II, the most crucial underpinning of freedom in the world has been the vigor of the advanced liberal democracies and the alliances that bound them together. Through the Cold War, the key multilateral anchors were NATO, the expanding European Union, and the U.S.-Japan security alliance. With the end of the Cold War and the expansion of NATO and the EU to virtually all of Central and Eastern Europe, liberal democracy seemed ascendant and secure as never before in history.

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Democrats who have struggled for years to sell the public on the Affordable Care Act are now confronting a far more urgent task: mobilizing a political coalition to save it.

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Trinidad has the highest rate of Islamic State recruitment in the Western hemisphere. How did this happen?

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At-Trinidadi, as his nom de guerre suggests, is from the Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), a country more readily associated with calypso and carnival than the “caliphate.” Asked if he had a message for “the Muslims of Trinidad,” he condemned his co-religionists at home for remaining in “a place where you have no honor and are forced to live in humiliation, subjugated by the disbelievers.” More chillingly, he urged Muslims in T&T to wage jihad against their fellow citizens: “Terrify the disbelievers in their own homes and make their streets run with their blood.”